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5 Reasons It’s About Damn Time the NFL Season Started Already

The NFL season officially begins tonight with the Steelers-Titans kickoff game and I, for one, couldn’t be happier. Maybe it’s just because we were all waiting around for the inevitable unretiring of You-Know-Who, but this year’s pre-season seemed interminable. Commitments prevent me from watching tonight’s game live, but here are some reasons why I’m just glad we are finally, officially, into football season.

1. Pre-season football sucks – none of the starters play long enough to get a handle on how good or bad any given team is, and the coaches are being too cagy about their game plans to get a really good look at any new schemes. Also, I can’t enjoy games that don’t count unless they are 1) a Spring Training baseball game I am actually at (meaning I’m some place warm in early March) or 2) an under six soccer game (if you have seen one, you will know why).

So. Cute.

2. Actual football games mean actual fantasy football games. In Ladies … League we’ve been behaving ourselves, but in my other league, we’ve been killing time over the last couple of weeks by posting fake press releases on the league message board announcing new team names and making fun of everyone else’s. Not that that hasn’t been entertaining, but at a certain point someone drags Greenpeace and the Sierra Club into a joke about combating a team name that promotes cruelty to insects, and, really, there’s just nowhere to go after that. We need some new material.

Ouch.

3. I can start associating Dallas’s new stadium with the Cowboys again and stop associating it with this.

4. I’m a knitter. I only really knit when I have large chunks of time to sit in front of the television, which I have not had much of this summer. Which means I still haven’t finished the sweater I was knitting for my mom’s birthday in July even though I started it a year ago and my mother has now been not-so-subtly asking every time I call home when I’m going to finish it so she can wear it when the weather cools off and I SWEAR MOM I’M GOING TO GET IT DONE. I WILL NOT STOP WATCHING FOOTBALL UNTIL THE LAST STITCH IS CAST OFF. Geez.

5. I love the Jets. I love defenders Darelle Revis and Kerry Rhodes, particularly. I have loved Rex Ryan since his defense was the only good thing about the Sooners my freshman year of college. At least half the time my team is on the field this year should be very exciting. And for the other half, I’ll at least get to look at Mark Sanchez.

Yes, Darelle. We're happy, too.

Parts of this list are a little personal, obviously. Why are you glad football’s back?

I’m a born and raised Cowboys fan so it will take a damn long time to associate that building as “home” as opposed to A) another double-J circus and you said it B) the place where the Sooners fell from grace. Hook ’em Horns.

I’m very, very interested to see how Mark Sanchez does. I’ve had many a discussion with folks here in LA, as they are obviously keen on him. The question is will he end up a big turd like Leinart. My argument is…no. Leinart graduated, but he really never left college. He should’ve gone to a team that was more than six hours away from LA. It didn’t help that he went to a city that isn’t counted as one of the most serious football cities in the country. Sanchez, however…much the opposite. So we shall see.